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SGIUNGE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 883 



trary they will often take the initiative in 

 new movements. They will report impres- 

 sions gathered as they mingle with the 

 people of the state ; they will feel not only 

 free, but in duty bound to make sugges- 

 tions; they will make it a point to know 

 what the university is aiming at, and will 

 help to interpret the institution to the 

 state. The alumni will frequent the only 

 lobbies that the university can afford to 

 enter, the daily converse of citizens and the 

 agencies of publicity. And all this the 

 alumni can do effectively only through an 

 organization which will cooperate heartily 

 with the other members of the university 

 community. 



If a people is not to perish mentally and 

 spiritually it must be steadily refreshed 

 by streams of thought and idealism. Of 

 these the university strives to be a peren- 

 nial source. Unless graduation is a mock- 

 ery hundreds of men and women go forth 

 each year to diffuse throughout the com- 

 monwealth the ideas and attitude toward 

 life which they gained from their college 

 training. The value of all this must be as 

 real as it is intangible. Mathew Arnold 

 has described the effect of such diffusion of 

 ideas in speaking of "this knowledge 

 turning a stream of fresh and free thought 

 upon our stock notions and habits, which 

 we now follow staunchly but mechanically, 

 vainly imagining that there is a virtue in 

 following them staunchly which makes up 

 for the mischief of following them mechan- 

 ically." If a state is to be flexible and es- 

 cape the bonds of habit and custom it 

 must be constantly revivified. In this serv- 

 ice the university must play a leading part. 



The university campus must be as wide 

 as the boundaries of the commonwealth. 

 The term university extension comes to us 

 from the aristocratic centers of Cambridge 

 and Oxford. There is about it a faint sug- 

 gestion of the missionary spirit — just a 



hint of patronage and condescension. Of 

 this spirit there must be no trace in a state 

 university. Where truth is to be discov- 

 ered or applied, wherever earnest citizens 

 need organized knowledge and tested skill, 

 there the university is on its own ground. 

 Our ideas of time and space are changing 

 rapidly; traditional prejudices are disap- 

 pearing. The university sees as its mem- 

 bers not only the students who resort to the 

 chief center, but the other thousands on 

 farms, in factories, in offices, in shops, in 

 schoolrooms and in homes who look to it 

 for guidance and encouragement. It is 

 fascinating to picture the possibilities of 

 this widening sphere of higher education 

 as it makes its way into every corner of the 

 state, frankly creating new needs and re- 

 sourcefully meeting the consequent de- 

 mands. 



To find exceptional men and women, to 

 train them for service, to fit them for 

 leadership, to fill them with zeal for truth 

 and justice, is the one great aim of the uni- 

 versity. "The mind which keeps the mass 

 in motion," said Godkin, "would most 

 probably, if we could lay bare the secret 

 of national vigor, be found in the possession 

 of a very small proportion of the people, 

 though not in any class in particular, 

 neither among the rich nor the poor, the 

 learned nor the simple, capitalists nor 

 laborers. ..." Society must see to it that 

 this vivifying mind comes to its own. 

 Aristocracy draws its leadership from a 

 caste; democracy from every group of the 

 people. The state university should be ac- 

 cessible to all who give unusual promise, 

 whether they have private means or not. 

 Cecil Rhodes left a fortune to make Oxford 

 for all time ^ a Mecca for successive scores 

 of American youth. Surely, large-minded 

 men of wealth, local communities, some 

 time, perhaps the state itself, will endow 

 scholarships which will draw^ to our uni- 



